Christmas What Utter Rot!
by SnapeDoll
Summary: What Christmas time might be like for our favorite snarky Professor. Vague time-line.


_Christmas – What Utter Rot! _

_Bah Humbug_

Evening was soon coming. Although Severus had remained bottled up in his office for the day, ensconced in his own work, it was easy enough to sense the cruel bite of the cold that night would soon bring. At least he wouldn't have to put up with the utter foolishness of those 'Holiday Dinners' that Dumbledore had insisted everyone attend all these last years. Snape's lip curled up in an unconscious recognition of the inner loathing he felt in these remembrances, and his fingers bore down even harder on the quill he was using in attempting to make notations on his current work.  
And although, as much as he would have liked, the memories of Christmas past would not leave him be....

It was quite bad enough, all those holidays before, when Potter hadn't arrived at Hogwarts yet. The requisite call down to the festive holiday formal dinner, where everyone was forced into pretending they were honestly enjoying being there. Where you could smell the sherry wafting from that old bat like rancid potion fumes from a first years cauldron. Where the students who were inevitably stuck at the castle, for whatever pathetic reason, would fall between being "chummy" with Dumbledore, sighing miserably into their mashed potatoes, and giving Snape himself snide looks as if wondering why he were present at the holiday feast. Where Dumbledore would switch out his normal, everyday hat, to something ridiculous and make as if just everyone was having a jolly good time. The damned explosion of holiday crackers, mice jumping everywhere, smoke billowing out.... It was enough to cause him to AK someone.

He flinched back slightly from the pain of that thought, briefly seeing the flash of green light in his minds eye, the green flash of light that he was well accustomed to by now and bent his head once more to his writing, consciously wrenching his thoughts back to where they needed to be. To the complexities of potions. Getting lost in the intricacies of potions equations, and the delicate balances that must always - Always! - be maintained in this art, brought an always welcomes sense of oblivion to him.  
The synthesis of any potion ingredient was never easy, and this particular one had been giving him trouble for the last several months. It involved an SN1 cross reaction, wherein the Beta hydrogens attached to carbon 6 nearly underwent something akin to an elimination reaction, rather than a substitution reaction - but every single blasted time he'd attempted the procedure in his private potions lab, something had gone amiss. It had been twice now that his lab had suffered to the extreme. Nearly like the time, when Black and Potter had attempted to make him look bad, back in third year right before the holidays, in front of...

No. Damnit. No.

Slamming the quill down, and in one fluid movement pushing his chair violently backwards so that it tips over, rounding onto its side. Snape heads for his office door. Pausing only momentarily to fling his winter cloak over himself, he wrenches the door to his office opens, then slams it shut and begins heading for the stairs to the grounds. If it took having to freeze these thoughts out of his mind, then so be it. His feet near slammed down on the stones of the dungeon floor as he made for the exit.  
The fool aurors be damned, he thinks to himself, striding across the grounds and towards the castle gate. Dumbledore had been harassing all of the professors to work more on the plans for making the castle more secure. Well then, so be it, he thinks to himself. What better way to spend a freezing evening out, then spent in silent contemplation of ways to make the castle more secure against the depredations of the Death Eaters.

An hour later, Snape arrives at Hogsmeade. After some necessary 'pleasantries' with one of the aurors he'd so far encountered, he was in a slightly better mood. Not that it would appear so to anyone else. After a moments pause, Snape began to head for the Hogs Head. His head held high, and his wand held out, he walked by the shop windows, brief flickers of light winking back at him from the glass.


End file.
